Somewhere retail: Bromley High Street Every time I make one of these 'random borough' visits, only one of the six locations I visit is ever full of people. And it's always the shops. Bromley High Street was no exception. You can tell shopping's important round here because they make a special announcement the second you get off the train - "This is Bromley South. Alight here for the Glades Shopping Centre". There must be little else of any importance in the town centre. The long High Street looks just like any other, although we're talking major chain stores rather than pound shops. Single-sex gangs of youths stalk the malls, the girls striding purposefully from fashion outlet to shoe shop, the boys out for a laugh beneath gelled haystack hair. Out in the street there's an upmarket market where pushchairs jostle with shopmobility buggies. It's not too late to buy a shrub for the garden, and it's not too early to buy a homemade teddy bear for Christmas. In Market Square the wall beside Argos has been painted with a giant green mural depicting Charles Darwin's 'tree of evolution' (more from him tomorrow). Until last year the mural featured the life and works of HG Wells instead, which is perhaps more appropriate given that he was born in Atlas House just across the High Street. His birthplace is now a department store, until recently an Alders but since metamorphosed into a featureless Primark. And HG's upstairs window, marked by a small blue plaque, now looks out over a kiddies' mini-fairground ride and a garish pink Ann Summers. No one would have believed it in the last years of the nineteenth century. by train: Bromley South, Bromley North
Every time I make one of these 'random borough' visits, only one of the six locations I visit is ever full of people. And it's always the shops. Bromley High Street was no exception. You can tell shopping's important round here because they make a special announcement the second you get off the train - "This is Bromley South. Alight here for the Glades Shopping Centre". There must be little else of any importance in the town centre. The long High Street looks just like any other, although we're talking major chain stores rather than pound shops. Single-sex gangs of youths stalk the malls, the girls striding purposefully from fashion outlet to shoe shop, the boys out for a laugh beneath gelled haystack hair. Out in the street there's an upmarket market where pushchairs jostle with shopmobility buggies. It's not too late to buy a shrub for the garden, and it's not too early to buy a homemade teddy bear for Christmas. In Market Square the wall beside Argos has been painted with a giant green mural depicting Charles Darwin's 'tree of evolution' (more from him tomorrow). Until last year the mural featured the life and works of HG Wells instead, which is perhaps more appropriate given that he was born in Atlas House just across the High Street. His birthplace is now a department store, until recently an Alders but since metamorphosed into a featureless Primark. And HG's upstairs window, marked by a small blue plaque, now looks out over a kiddies' mini-fairground ride and a garish pink Ann Summers. No one would have believed it in the last years of the nineteenth century.
Every time I make one of these 'random borough' visits, only one of the six locations I visit is ever full of people. And it's always the shops. Bromley High Street was no exception. You can tell shopping's important round here because they make a special announcement the second you get off the train - "This is Bromley South. Alight here for the Glades Shopping Centre". There must be little else of any importance in the town centre. The long High Street looks just like any other, although we're talking major chain stores rather than pound shops. Single-sex gangs of youths stalk the malls, the girls striding purposefully from fashion outlet to shoe shop, the boys out for a laugh beneath gelled haystack hair. Out in the street there's an upmarket market where pushchairs jostle with shopmobility buggies. It's not too late to buy a shrub for the garden, and it's not too early to buy a homemade teddy bear for Christmas. In Market Square the wall beside Argos has been painted with a giant green mural depicting Charles Darwin's '